Thanks for all the replies. I've so far done everything in MySQL from a text interface, so I tried setting the old password option in the my.ini file and rebooting, but I got the same error. I also upgraded the packages. DBD-mysql went up from 2.9003 to 2.9004, and DBI from 1.47 to 1.48. The documentation I have said I should be using 2.9003 or later, but as I said in the original post, I wasn't sure if the documentation was out of date. However, these changes didn't help, either. The reported line number of the error moved from 664 to 666. Good job I'm not superstitious!

I don't want to downgrade MySQL, for two reasons. One is that I want the sub-query functionality that is available in 4.1.x but not 4.0.x. The other is that there have been some attempts to breach our security recently. They have failed so far, but I don't want my systems to be responsible for any successes, so I'm rather keen on the added security of the new password system.

I haven't got trace to work yet, but I haven't made more than a superficial attempt. I'll RTFM and try again, and report back. I'll also see what happens when I'm back in London on Monday, as I have two 4.0.15 servers on Linux boxen that I can try to connect to. They are going to be upgraded soon, but not next week. If I'm still stuck, I'll try removing my entire MySQL system and re-installing from scratch. Beyond that, it looks as though I'm going to have to use the ODBC connection. I'll keep reading and trying, though. The slithy tove has not been brilliged that can outgrabe me!

Just to make things worse, the hotel last night was out of Trappist beer. What's a monk supposed to drink? :-)

Thanks again,

John Davies